My Lucky Board
by phantomviola
Summary: A chronicle of the life of the one and only Ben Sullivan.
1. My Lucky Board

**A/N: Okay, this story revolves around one Ben Sullivan throughout the most imporant times of his life. I already pretty much have the second chappie. Please review, even if you don't like it.

* * *

**

**A Construction Site, 2002**

I was working on the stairs. My hand didn't hurt very much, I was used to pain, but the damn bleeding got annoying after a while.

Dre came over, with his hammer and screwdriver. "Sully, how's it going?"

I tried to pick up my hammer, but it slipped and fell on my knee. "Damn."

"What?"

I waved my board-ed hand in his direction. "This makes everything so much harder."

Dre's eyes doubled in size. "Holy mother of—doesn't that hurt?"

"My knee? I'll probably have a good-sized bruise-"

"Your freaking hand!"

I shrugged. "It started feeling numb about half an hour ago."

"Didn't you report it?"

That's the thing about Dre. He might put on a tough-other-side-of-tracks act, but as soon as blood comes into play, he freaks.

"You're only supposed to report three per week."

"That's to make sure people don't report papercuts! Not—not boards nailed to someone's hand! How long has it been like that?"

"Since you started the master bedroom."

"That was an hour and a half ago!"

I aimed the nailgun. "More like an hour and forty-five minutes."

"Go! Go! I'll cover for you! Just—go to the hospital!"

I shrugged, dropped the nailgun, grabbed my camera, and headed over to Sacred Heart, doing what is sometimes called "The Ben Sullivan One-Handed Driving Show." JFK Memorial Hospital was at least twenty minutes closer, but the doctors over there would just get pissed off that I had showed up again.

I waited in the lobby for a while, sitting next to an extremely talkative woman named Jill Tracy. "…so then I had a breakdown. I got on Prozac, but, well, you know, side effects…"

"Miss Tracy?" An orderly called.

"Oh, that's me." As she walked away, I snapped a picture of her retreating back.

A young teenager sat in Jill's seat. "Hey, I'm Razz. I tried to get my friend to talk to someone, and she hurt me."

I nodded. The admitting nurse called me over. "Mr. Sullivan?"

"Yes?"

"I see you haven't filled in any major symptoms in, and we're pretty swamped, so in the in the interest of time, can I move you down the list?"

I shrugged. "Sure. But I might get blood on the chairs." I held up my hand.

"Actually I think I'll keep you where you are," she said, trying to maintain composure. She wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to me. "Exam room three, second floor. Your doctor will be Elliot Reid."

"Um, actually, can I have Dr. Perry Cox?" Nancy raised her eyebrows. "He's my, er, brother."

"Your name's Sullivan, right?"

"Yeah, he's my… biological brother. Our parents were killed in a… helicopter accident… we were adopted by, uh, different families. We only found out a few months ago."

She might have looked like she wasn't buying it, but really she was superimposing Perry's face onto my own. Apparently we looked close enough, because she took the slip back and changed something. "Second floor, exam room four."

I smiled and held up my right hand in victory. Nancy looked sickened.

* * *

"Ben!" Perry called. "Good god, what have you done to yourself this time."

I held up my camera and snapped a picture at his half annoyed, half concerned expression. "Nail gun accident." I pulled the picture out with my teeth. "That's a good 'un. Percival Cox, showing concern."

"No one would believe it was me."

I smiled. This was why I loved him.

"Listen, I'm going to get you some morphine, and a radiologist will get up here to take an x-ray. So if you can just sit here without killing yourself and/or driving someone to suicide, that would just be tee-rific."

"Aye-aye, chief."

"I'm serious. We don't want a repeat of the great staple gun accident of '98."

"Well, if they wanted to give me blood, they should have just given me the blood. They act like I've never gotten a transfusion."

He laughed and left.

I wasted my time taking pictures of people walking by and making shadow puppets with the light-thing they put x-rays on.

Perry reappeared with a morphine drip. "Tell me when it starts feeling numb. Wouldn't want to accidentally overdose."

I smiled. "I knew the Mafia was still after me."

"I'm actually serious."

"You're never serious," I chuckled. "You can be sarcastic. You occasionally can be happy. You can be drunk."

"I can… pretend to be serious."

There was a silence.

"Numb yet?"

"Yup."

* * *

My camera was an attempt to annoy my father into liking me. I got it three months after I quit (or got thrown out, depending on your perspective) Boy Scouts. My neighbor Suey and I would ride around town on bikes, buying crap from garage sales and reselling it for a profit at school. My dad still didn't know either my being thrown out or the event which led to it, and I wasn't in a hurry to tell him.

I was fourteen, so Jordan must have been fifteen and Danni (who was Danielle then) was eight or nine. My dad thought Jordan's razor blade with was amusing, and later Danni and Dad bonded over their habit of sneaking out during dinner for smokes.

Every Saturday at ten to ten I would set out towards the community center where the Boy Scout meetings were held, then double back to the library, where I would wait for Suey.

Suey was a girl from the Midwest with celery-colored eyes and a smattering of freckles. We had nothing in common, but besides Jordan, she was the only kid my age in the neighborhood.

Armed with last week's profits and whatever money we'd earned from allowance/stolen from our siblings, we rode around town and bought whatever looked marketable.

The camera was sitting between a red ceramic mug and an ancient stack of jazz records. The mistress of the sale, a widowed woman in her mid-seventies, came up behind me.

"It used ta be his pri' and joy. He spen' all his time wi' that strap 'round his neck. You wan' it? I can't bear to look a' it anymore. Fitty cents. I got some film fer it too."

She shuffled away and reappeared with a camera case. "S'all in 'ere."

I reached in my pocket and pulled out two quarters. I gave them to her, and she handed me the case and camera. I put the strap around my neck.

Suey came up behind me. "Are you gonna sell that?"

I shook my head. "I'm gonna keep it. Do you mind?"

She shrugged. "I bought myself something, too." She reached behind her and pulled out a giant poster of Paul McCartney. "He's gorgeous, ain't he?"

I rolled my eyes.

When I got home, I announced my presence by snapping a picture of my sleeping father. He jolted awake. "Whassat?

"It's a camera, Dad."

Silence.

"What does it do?"


	2. My Sister's Fiancé

**Warning: people get drunk in a bar. YAY! Lol. On with the story.**

**

* * *

**

Oregon, 1995

Roxanne was crying into her coffee cup. That was the only reason I agreed; see her tears mix with that beautiful, top of the line, coffee…

I had gotten the coffee from my last girlfriend as a birthday gift. Granted, that was nearly three years ago, and if coffee had an expiration date then it would be beyond expired, but it was a matter of principle.

"Well," I said awkwardly, "I have to go out to California tonight… but I could call my sister and see if I can get out of it…"

Actually, there was no way in Hell I was missing the thing, but I wasn't about to let Roxanne know what a shallow, self-centered person I was.

Kidding.

Roxanne lived in an apartment two doors down from me. This was the third time this month she'd found out her boyfriend was cheating on her, and personally, I didn't know why she'd let him even have a second chance. She was pretty in a second-choice-to-the-prom sort of way, with dark blue eyes and brown hair.

She grabbed a Kleenex. "California?"

I nodded. "Most of my family lives there."

"Why d'you have to go tonight?"

I reached behind me to grab another box of Kleenex. "My sister is having a formal meet-the-fiancé party. But, really, it's no big deal."

"No… no, go. I'll be okay."

I laughed. "Sweet of you to think this is such a big deal. This is her third."

She looks confused. "Third party?"

"Third fiancé." After a second, I added, "This year."

"Well, still, you should go…" She gave me a look that every woman thinks is the most subtle hint, but in reality is pretty much a neon sign.

"I guess you could come…"

She tried to hide her happiness with another tissue. I bet she thought because we lived in California that my parents were rich movie stars and my sister was marrying a Hollywood legend's son, or something. If only. Danni had just finished college and was looking for a permanent job, Mom was "thinking about retiring" from her job as a part-time maganize editor (which she'd been thinking about since before I was born), and Jordan was doing things at Sacred Heart too boring to comprehend.

The ride to California was silent. We rode towards the sun, just beginning to set. By the time we got there, a dingy bar three blocks away from the hospital where my dad had worked (and where Jordan had taken his face), the sun had receded enough that a hazy dusk had fallen over the place.

When we got out of the car, Roxanne started walking off into the distance, away from the bar.

"Roxanne!" I called.

She looked confused. "But… I thought we were going…" She pointed at a posh Italian restaurant across the street.

I laughed and pointed at the bar, where a drunk stumbled out and promptly vomited into the bushes.

She followed me cautiously into the bar. I spotted my dad talking to the bartender, and Jordan making out with a fantastically gorgeous guy. Danni and Mom had to be around somewhere.

"That's Jordan," I said, pointing to Jordan's blue dress, which was cut just low enough to reaffirm to herself that she was not, in fact, almost thirty.

I started to walk over to her, but Roxanne grabbed my arm. "Wait. I can't go over there."

"Why?"

"Her fiancé's too gorgeous. What if I, I dunno, start flirting with him?" She was in the first stage of a freak-out. I knew I could stop it, but I'd have to work fast.

"Okay, Roxanne, breathe… breathe, breathe, breathe…"

She took a deep breath. "Sorry, Ben. It's just…"

I shrugged. "No worries. That guy isn't her fiancé anyway."

She looked so confused. I had such a strong urge to take a picture of her face that I had to physically clamp down on my arm to stop myself.

"But… she was… they were…"

I grabbed an abandoned beer from the next table. "Welcome to my family."

I took a swig, and when I lowered the bottle I saw my mother looking at me. "Ah… hi Mom. This is Roxanne," I said, and motioned from her to my mom. "Roxanne, this is my mother."

Her face contorted into something that could have been mistaken for a smile. "So Benjamin, you finally got yourself a girlfriend?"

"No."

"That's a pity."

I turned back to Roxanne. "Um, I'm gonna find my sister Danni… and you can… talk…"

"Over by the sorority sisters," my mom directed.

I wandered over to the place where all the blondes with Greek letters plastered to their chests were sitting and playing truth or dare. Danni was wearing her old Delta Phi Epsilon sweatshirt.

"Funny, I thought they made you give back the sweatshirt when they kicked you out."

She turned to me. "Hey, Ben. Didn't think you'd show up."

"Make out with me?" I asked.

"No."

"Please? The girl I brought already got freaked out by Jordan and her making-out-with-anyone-that-makes-her-feel-relatively-younger act. I just want to see how far I can push her before she freaks and before she freaks and calls her mom to pick her up." I actually didn't want to make out with her, but I liked torturing her in front of her pigtail buddies.

She perked up. "So you finally have a girlfriend?"

"No." Why does everyone use the word _finally_? "So where's the fiancé who hates himself enough not to have stormed out already?"

"Over by the bar." She turned back to the Barbies long enough to laugh at a joke.

"And you didn't give him a warm Sullivan welcome?"

She shook her head, her pigtails swishing. "He has crazy eyes."

I rolled my own not-so-crazy eyes and walked over to the bar. Nine people: a blonde babe, a red-haired guy drowning himself in scotch, two guys and their girlfriends, a black-haired guy checking his watch, a Latina woman, and a girl flirting with the bartender.

I started eliminating down: not any of the girls (unless I had been very wrong about Jordan's intentions), none of their boyfriends. That left the black-haired guy and the borderline alcoholic. I looked back and forth from them. The black-haired impatient guy caught me looking at him and started at me. His eyes were two different colors, but other than that they were very mundane. Borderline alcoholic it is.

I walked over to him. "Are you the guy that's marrying Jordan?"

He looked up. Danni was right, his eyes were crazy, but the crazy was shielding something else. "Yup. Want a drink?" Before I could answer, he motioned for the bartender to get me a drink. "She still making out with that guy?"

"Brown-haired frat boy?" I asked, glancing back.

"Nope, must be a different one."

I snapped a quick picture of the bartender. The sudden burst of light seemed to, for just a second, light everything just enough to see things what they really were. Jordan was just a commitaphobe like the rest of us, Danni was afraid of growing up and leaving her ex-sorority sister college personality, Mom was mad to see her only son watching life behind a camera lens without actually interacting, Roxanne was here, not because she wanted to forget about her cheating boyfriend, but because she wanted reaffirmment that there were relationships out there more messed up than her own. And Jordan's fiancé? He was here, not because he was mad at Jordan, but because he was mad at himself for not loving her enough to forgive her.

I paused, then held up the glass into the air. "Cheers." I took a sip. "You're name's Perry, right?"

He nodded.

"What's that short for?" I asked, taking another sip. I wasn't usually a cautious drinker, but I still had to drive back. Oh, what the hell, I thought, and threw it back.

He motioned for two more drinks. "Don't ask and we'll be best friends forever."


End file.
